The Giants are heading into their matchup with the Los Angeles Rams with plenty of noise swirling around the organization, but the biggest football message in the mix is simple: John Harbaugh is not interested in coasting on what happened last week.
After the opener in Australia, Harbaugh made it clear the standard has to rise fast.
“We understand that how you play this week is not gonna be good enough to win next week,” Harbaugh said Monday afternoon. “How we played [Sunday] night will not win the game next Monday night.
It won’t be good enough. So we’ve got to improve.”
He doubled down on the turnover issue, too.
“We’re putting the ball on the ground entirely too much,” Harbaugh said on Zoom. “It’s gotta change.
We’ve gotta make the change on that. Every single ball carrier has got to make sure that it gets better.
Sometimes as coaches we gotta drill it, we gotta teach it and we gotta make sure that we do it better. Because the ball was on the ground four times.
That’s not even close to being acceptable as an example.”
That kind of hard line fits the larger view of what Harbaugh is trying to build in New York. One analysis pointed to him as the kind of coach who can help rebuild a broken culture, noting that coaching turnover and eight losing seasons over the last decade had left the Giants in a rough place. The same piece argued that Harbaugh’s CEO-style approach, with him reporting directly to ownership rather than general manager Joe Schoen, has already been embraced in New York and could help steer the franchise back toward contention.
There was plenty to like about the Giants’ opener, too. NFL.com described it as a strong beginning to the Harbaugh era, with Jaxson Dart back in the lineup and Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo both contributing in the 28-20 win over the rival Cowboys.
Dart, Nabers and Skattebo were identified as the offensive core that drove the victory. The game had its flaws - penalties, fumbles and drops all showed up - but the result gave the franchise the start it wanted.
Nabers’ return carried its own weight. His mother, Tonya, told The Athletic that she stayed away so he could handle the moment on his own.
“This game, Malik had to do this by himself,” Tonya told The Athletic on Monday. “He needed to go out there with no pressure from anybody and just perform… It worked out perfectly because if I had been there, I wouldn’t have been able to hide my emotion or my fear.
He would have been able to sense that I was nervous or my anxiety was high, and I think I would have made him uneasy. So God’s timing is the best timing.
And so this journey he needed to take by himself.”
She also said the moment came from a long process of trust and recovery.
“We knew that it was his moment,” Tonya said. “For him to go out there, for him to decide that, ‘I’m ready,’ it took for him to trust this entire process.
Trust the surgeon. Trust the surgery.
Trust his workout and his recovery. He had to trust this entire journey for him to step out on that field and know that he was ready to play.”
The Record added another layer to Nabers’ night, describing how Jaxson Dart knew exactly where he was headed after the final kneel-down in the Giants’ 28-20 victory over Dallas. Dart recognized what the moment meant for Nabers, and what Nabers means to him and to the franchise moving forward.
Off the field, the Giants’ new cap situation has already sparked speculation. The New York Post reported that once Jevon Holland’s restructured contract created $5.8 million in salary-cap savings, fans immediately started wondering whether the team could use that room to pursue Joey Porter Jr. The Post also noted the irony that the Giants had once been “splitting hairs” between Deonte Banks and Porter when the two were being evaluated as late first-round picks in 2023.
There was also movement on the ownership side. Carolyn Tisch Blodgett said the transfer of ownership shares from her uncle Steve Tisch and his siblings Laurie and Jonathan into a trust for their children is “done.”
She described it as a “natural next step” while speaking at the Front Office Sports Asset Class event in New York. Blodgett, who already owns Gotham FC, said she has been involved with the Giants for “a number of years in international expansion, in fan development, in the in-game,” and added that her focus is on helping in the present.
“I’m just really trying to get there every day, to be honest, right now,” she said. “I’m not really focused on the future.
I just continue to think about how I can contribute to the team every day. And, you know, I think there’s so much work to be done when you think about what it means to bring in a new coach and bring in a new culture, the same can happen on the business side as well.
And so I am spending a lot of time thinking about, with a winning product on the field, what does success look like from a business perspective? … What are we doing in flag football?
What are we doing internationally? What are we doing with a more diverse audience?
So there’s so much work to be done right now.”
From Big Blue View, this week’s opponent and BBV mailbag were also part of the Giants conversation as the focus shifts toward the Rams.
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